Research carried out among the UK’s academic community during 2012 found that 40% of researchers kicked off their project with a trawl through the internet for material, while only 2% preferred to make a visit to a physical library space. That’s a huge change in a relatively short period, fuelled by the sheer richness of the digital content that is now potentially available online.

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It’s a priority for us to make sure that the investment in digitisation of resources made over the last decade brings real returns and enriches research, teaching and learning. The project has been a way for us all to scope out the problems that hinder discoverability of digital assets and to devise solutions that will both support discovery of existing content and help to ensure that resources digitised in future have built-in discoverability.

They [Researchers] found that people search for digital resources in ways not fully understood by those charged with looking after resources. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of researchers and students, to develop a deeper understanding of the ways that they think, work and interact with digitised materials.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.